


Family

by Ceres_Libera



Series: Switch [3]
Category: Star Trek: Alternate Original Series (Movies)
Genre: F/M, M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-01-01
Updated: 2013-01-13
Packaged: 2017-11-23 07:48:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 8,264
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/619742
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ceres_Libera/pseuds/Ceres_Libera
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Gaila has lost her family before. She will not lose another one, not without a fight.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Family 1/?

**Author's Note:**

> Happy New Year! One of my resolutions is to get myself back into the habit of writing after a too long fallow period. _Switch_ verse, based in the ST:XI universe, but strongly influenced by all canon ST-verses. _Family_ is the long-missing third story in the _Switch_ -verse, and I don’t suppose that what happens in Fidelity (or Family II) , the upcoming fifth story, will make much sense otherwise. You don’t have to be familiar with the previous stories, but it will most likely help. This is a story written from Gaila’s POV. I am, of course, tempted to say that it will be between three and five parts, but ... I make no promises.

+

Gaila might not believe in monogamy, but she did believe in happiness. She just could not believe that the two states could co-exist, despite all of her Terran friends aspirations to make them do so. 

In her experience, which admittedly was observed and not lived, monogamy and happiness as co-factors were too volatile to be sustained: there was always a key differential, i.e., that the status of monogamy could only be maintained for far too short of a period for one partner, and far too long for the other. 

In fact, from her observations – and if she hadn’t become an engineer, she might have become an anthropologist simply so that she could study Terrans and their confounding, _fascinating_ behaviors -- she’d noted that monogamy inexorably led to strife, jealousy and all of its associated miseries, as predictably as the transits of the planets. However, like any good anthropologist, she accepted that her Terran friends had an evolutionary bias toward the pair bond, despite the fact that the advantage conveyed by it as the basis for a family structure had always been limited. 

Of course, if she was honest with herself, a curious Terran turn of phrase that she found amusing despite the incomprehensibility of the possibility that one could be _dishonest with one’s own self_ , she could admit that her own evolutionary adaptation as an Orion made her prejudiced against the pair bond. Or perhaps it was that she, like any Orion, was simply incapable of understanding the appeal of a permanent, exclusive pair bond. After all, any Orion knew that sex could be had, and quite happily, with a number of partners. And love and romance? That need not be reserved to one partner alone. There would always be favorites, of course, and it was only natural to share those things that gave pleasure with the ones who would most enjoy them. So, flowers and candles for one lover, and handcuffs and blindfolds for another, or a bit of both for each? As long as everyone was happy and loved and most importantly, _satisfied_ , all was well. 

But the idea of confining every sexual impulse to one relationship was … well, unnatural. 

And for all that they seemed to idealize the pair bond, she wasn’t at all sure that it was healthy for her Terran friends, who had been so conditioned to desire it. After all, Terrans spoke of ‘falling’ in love, as if it were involuntary, and it seemed there was a certain truth to that notion – Spock had pointed her to the relevant science. Once she had understood the biochemistry of Terran pheromone emissions and their lifetime fertility cycles along with the role of pair bonding as an ethnobiological adaptation for the fostering of the young, she was able to discern that pair-bound couples did, in fact, share a complementary body chemistry. However, like all things, it was not a static situation, and the scent of the bond changed over time as it strengthened, deepened, and then, inevitably, fractured. 

Nyota had told her that this was due to the youth of their colleagues, that for many of them, these relationships were a kind of practice for a deeper, more permanent bond. Conscious as she was of the affairs that supposedly permanently bonded and exclusive faculty members carried on with those who were not their partners, Gaila found this belief hard to reconcile with the facts. Spock had tried to explain to her the complexities of Terran ‘romance’ and psychology, but, in truth, they both found it perplexingly illogical. After all, what was _romantic_ about deceit? 

What Gaila found most amazing was that all of this deceit could occur without her Terran friends being the least bit aware of it. They were, for all intents and purposes, insensible to the scents that would have alerted them to the changes in their primary relationship.

Here, at last, Gaila thought that she had found her purpose, a way that she could pay back her Terran friends for their many kindnesses to her as a newcomer to their culture and society. She was therefore distressed when her Terran friends reacted with anger when informed them that a partner was separating from them, much less what occurred when she informed them of a partner’s ‘cheating’. This was extraordinarily confusing to her. How could her friends place such a premium on fidelity and then shun the knowledge of when infidelity had or was occurring?! Her only answer for this conundrum was that love, and particularly monogamy, made Terrans irrational.

But she had learned to keep her opinions, and her observations, to herself.

+

This did not mean, however, that she would not act.

Observation, however, was always first and foremost to any plan of action, as when her sweet Nyota -- who despite her sharp tongue truly was as dear to her as any of the sisters that Gaila had left behind – had begun to exhibit the signs and scents of a Terran falling in love. Up until that very point in their kinship, Nyota had displayed impeccably correct manners: she had flirted and taken partners where she willed, and all had been light and goodness – good for her complexion and circulation, good for her stress level – healthy. 

But the scent that Nyota had begun to exude boded no good, Gaila was sure of it, and continued being sure of it until she smelled Commander Spock when he was near Nyota. His essence was different than Nyota’s, of course – not only was he male, he was a copper-based humanoid despite his mixed ancestry. In truth, she wasn’t exactly sure _what_ she was smelling at first. She had little to compare it with: although she herself was copper-based, her people did not emit pheromones for pair bonding purposes, and her exposure to pair-bonded Vulcans was non-existent. Further complicating the matter was the fact that Vulcans could and did choose partners and make lifebonds for practical -- _logical_ , rather than emotional -- reasons. Since it was hard for her to assess _what_ she was smelling, she, like any good anthropologist, observed. And over time, as Spock became more and more attached to her Nyota, she discerned the evolution of his scent, comprehended the rise of his desire for her. 

Although their state of monogamy still concerned her, there was some assurance in the serious manner in which Vulcans created bonds. Too seriously, in her opinion, but that was neither here nor there. Vulcans did not fall in love – they weighed the options, the pros and the cons, and only then created bonds. From her perspective, it was as ponderous a process of declaring love as the Terran way was precipitous, but the very nature of it somewhat appeased her fears. 

It didn’t hurt, of course, that Nyota quietly vibrated with happiness and love day after day, and week after week, or that Spock seemed to dote on her in his own quiet, and surprisingly sweet, way. Perhaps it was the influence of his Terran mother that had made him the kind of lover who brought Nyota baskets of flowers from the surfaces of planets he went to on away missions, or purchased her texts of rare dialects for her to decipher for pleasure. 

That was what Nyota wanted, and Gaila was happy for her pleasure, but none of that sweetness was really to Gaila’s taste. She’d always had an eye for, and a true appreciation of, the slightly wicked. That was why she and Jim had gotten on so well. 

Jim was good in bed, and fun to be with, and a bit of trickster – and how humiliating was _that_ , that he had tricked _her_ \-- but … she had considered all more than forgiven when she’d roused from drugged unconsciousness to the glorious sight of Jim’s Doctor bending over her. She was in pain, but she was alive and not forever lost in the wreckage of the _Farragut_. Her belief in her Terran friends had been vindicated, because she’d known that if anyone would find her, it would be Jim, who hid his sweetness from almost everyone. She had never told a soul, not even Nyota, about the tearful apologies he’d whispered into her hair when held her before she was transferred to the _Potemkin_ on their way back to Earth. Because while Jim might be a little wicked, he was a fierce advocate for what he considered to be right, and she would always love that about him. Their sensibilities connected on other levels as well – they were both hackers and gamesters, and she had been known to participate in a brawl or two, or well, more, herself. 

Yes, she and Jim were very alike, and not just because they both liked sex. For Gaila, that was like saying that she liked breathing, and not a personality attribute. No, the chief way that she and Jim intersected was very basic: he liked to be happy, he _wanted_ to be happy and strove to achieve that goal. Coincidentally, his reach for happiness was, like hers, partly about defying those who’d brought misery into their early lives. There was an old Terran saying of which she was particularly fond that stated, “A life well-lived is the best revenge.” She intended that would be true, leaving all that she had known before for freedom and adventure and _choice_.

So, when Jim had paired off with the Doctor just before they set off on the _Enterprise_ ’s five-year mission? Gaila had been shocked. 

Of all of her Terran friends, Jim had been the one who most behaved like an Orion, happily going from partner to partner while maintaining some key relationships. The universe was one big buffet of sensation, of scent and texture and joy – she couldn’t imagine limiting herself to one meal, much less one partner, something she’d thought that her adventurous Jim understood. 

So, his change to monogamy was truly confounding. Even more confounding? There’d been no real change in Jim’s scent to tip her off – Jim had always been attached to his Doctor, even before they’d had sex – just the addition of the common smells of sex itself. What had changed was the manner in which Jim had been so quietly transformed by happiness. How he radiated like a sol star whenever his Doctor was near, after they became lovers. It didn’t matter if the Doctor was grumbling at Jim, or eating dinner in the mess with him and gesticulating with his fork, or standing next to Jim’s chair on the Bridge, Jim just _shone_ whenever the man was around. It would be easy to say that she’d only seen a facsimile of Jim up until now, but that was too simplistic and not really true. In some way she could not define, Jim was somehow more himself now than he’d ever been before. 

Some of that shine, at the very least, had to be sexual satisfaction, which was totally understandable. Gaila had always assumed that the Doctor would be an incredible lover, what with those hands, the smoldering promise in his eyes, that mouth and the air of brooding intensity that surrounded him. Couple all that with his powerful handsomeness, his profound knowledge of physiology, the deep growl of his voice and those _hands_ (which were totally worth another mention) and well … she was only sorry that the Doctor wasn’t the type to indulge, as he would put in, in _escapades_. No, the Doctor was all intent and serious attention, and she shivered at the very thought of all his passionate regard focused upon her, as she was sure Jim did. Because the Doctor was the only one that Jim had ever looked at with a gaze of a certain intensity, no matter how much he might ‘sweet talk’ as the Doctor would say, ‘everything on two legs, and with fins and feathers besides’. But none of them were important, because the Doctor was the one with whom Jim wanted to bond.

More importantly, Gaila had known from the beginning that Jim had _always_ been the focus of the Doctor’s intensity. The Doctor’s steadiness eased her agitation somewhat, although it did make her fearful to see Jim risking both his heart and his happiness on something as predictably ephemeral as monogamy. She knew how important it was to have people you could count on for beings like herself and Jim, and if he lost the Doctor’s love and support … she couldn’t bear to think about it. She, of all people knew what it meant to rebuild yourself from nothing, knew how lucky she’d been. Starfleet had given her more than a career and the sense of self-reliance that had not been bred into her in her collective -- it had given her Nyota and Jim, who she loved like sister and brother, friend and lover, for their tender hearts and fierce minds. It had brought her to the _Enterprise_ , where she’d found the family that she’d never thought to have again. She loved them all, her second and most treasured family, from the pallid, volatile Scotty to sweet, and not so innocent, Chekov. She cherished Hikaru and his tender love for _all_ things green, for the warm quietness that masked his warrior soul. But out of all of them, there were none that she loved more than Nyota and Jim, and those partners that made them happy, and whom she’d come to value for themselves, quiet, serious, Spock and Jim’s passionate Doctor. 

That then -- that complacency that things would remain in stasis -- had been her first mistake. 

\+ 

Gaila entered the Officer’s Mess for her post-shift meal, set to coincide with what would be the Terran evening. The room was crowded, a welter of noise and scents making her feel momentarily vertiginous, a sensation that she had become familiar with over the years. Her day had been long, and she was tired, but she loved the ritual of the communal meal, even though she found that the confluence of smells significantly dimmed her appetite. Still, she had to eat to synthesize properly, so she would take some sustenance now, and some more nourishment in the lush verdancy of Hikaru’s section of the Botany lab before she retired to the comfort of her nest. She turned from the replicator and was overwhelmed by the sharp tang of anxiety that had risen like a high note above the other scents permeating the room. Her nostrils flaired and she centered on it, just as her eye was caught by the elder and younger Spock sitting across from each other at a small table. Her eyes narrowed as she watched, and she inhaled, wishing that she could isolate the words that they were saying to each other as easily as she could identify their essences.

“Gaila darlin’,” the Doctor said from above her, his essence a mixture of healthy Terran man, the meat he consumed regularly and the warm notes of wood from the alcohol that he preferred, and the subtle mixture of his body’s scent with Jim’s. He came and stood abreast of her, his eyes also traveling to the two Spocks. “I wouldn’t advise sitting over there.” He shook his head and made a demurring noise.

“I had no intention of doing so, Doctor Bones,” Gaila said. “Even had they not been …” she found herself at an uncommon loss for words.

“Whatever it is that they’re doin’,” the Doctor said in agreement, taking her tray, and indicating that she should walk ahead of him. “It doesn’t look real friendly.”

Gaila looked up at him. “Selek seems different to me this time, Doctor,” she said, then paused. “Is he ill? I know that he is not as aged as Vulcans usually become, but … “

“I don’t know, Gaila darlin’,” The Doctor guided her to a small, empty table on the opposite side of the room where it was quiet. Some of the engineers were having an especially volatile argument and the testosterone flaring was dizzying to her. She smiled at the Doctor’s back. He put down both of their trays, and continued speaking, now that he could be heard. “The other times when he’s come aboard, he’s sought me out for an exam or some such, but this time?” 

The Doctor pulled out her chair for her and she smiled at him, pleased as ever with his courtly attentions. He really was very handsome, and so very kind, despite his grumpy posturing. She sighed. It was such a shame that he and Jim had succumbed to a monogamous life.

“I swear he’s staying away from me.” He sat down in his own seat opposite her, but his eyes were across the room and not on her. 

“You are worried,” Gaila said with mild surprise. 

The Doctor took a sip of the tea that he drank by the liter, and then made a face, before adding a minute amount of sweetener to it. “I saw Nyota earlier,” he said quietly. “She was distressed.”

Gaila raised an eyebrow. “I have not seen Nyota today,” she said slowly.

“Spock didn’t come to her last night,” the Doctor said in an undertone intended not to carry. “In fact, he didn’t come home a’tall.”

Gaila drew in a sharp breath, inhaling. Across the room, the argument grew stronger, and even louder. “He has not been unfaithful to Nyota,” she said certainly. 

The Doctor stared at her, and leaned in to be heard. “Have you smelled an unfaithful Vulcan before?” he asked incredulously, scientific curiosity overcoming his typical good manners.

“Doctor,” Gaila smiled, quelling a nervous giggle, “—Bones,”

“Call me Leo, darlin’,” he said quietly, “I keep telling you – that’s what my family calls me.”

“Leo,” she whispered softly, around the lump of tears in her throat, “I know what Spock smells like when he desires something, and he does not bear that essence now.”

He nodded. “Our Spock,” he clarified.

She nodded.

“What does he smell like, then?” he asked. 

She was silent for a long time, and then shook her head. “I do not know how to name it,” she said. “I only know that he is … anxious.”

“Anxious?” the Doctor said thoughtfully. “Anxious. About what?”

“I do not know,” she said, speaking as quietly as he was. “Since the Ambassador has come aboard …”

He nodded. “Yeah, well, it’s making _me_ anxious, Gaila, and I don’t need any help in that department, thank you very much.” The Doctor paused. “And I can’t say that I’m happy about how he’s treating Nyota, either. What do you scent from the elder Spock?”

Gaila raised her head and followed Leo’s line of sight to the table where the two men sat, Spock’s posture rigid, the Ambassador’s impassive. They looked, of all things, like a father and son locked in disagreement. “I do not know him at all,” Gaila said. “He is not the same as our Spock.”

“No,” Leo said grimly. “And he ain’t the same as he used to be, either.” He turned his head to look at her. “This trip, if he isn’t with Spock, then he’s trying to talk to Jim.”

“About what?” Gaila asked.

“Jim won’t say,” Leo said, cutting through dinner somewhat more energetically than the piscean entrée required. “And I don’t like _that_ ,” he said, darkly. “A’tall. When it’s ship’s business, or universe-wrecking crises and the like, that’s fine. But this?” He took a mouthful and chewed before he looked up at her. “It ain’t about that, I guaran-damn-”

Across the room, a tray suddenly crashed to the floor and a welter of voices raised as the argument between the engineers resolved into an all-out brawl between half a dozen of them.

“Mother of God!” the Doctor said, and tapped his comm, even as he was standing up. “Security to the Mess, stat!” The Doctor was a man who was used to command, and he was on the move and yelling for the fighters to stand down with Gaila right behind him, heart pounding.

She passed two tables of ensigns arguing about what the argument was over, and Doctor Bones snapped at them both to “Keep quiet, you nitwits! And that’s an order!” 

The men wrestling on the ground resisted their combined efforts to separate them, and they got no help from the members of their party who were alternating between yelling and crying.

“What in the name of God!” Doctor Bones said. “Hanlon!” He yelled at the large security chief. “A little help here? They’re trying to kill each other!”

She moved aside to let Hanlon and Giotto work their way into the scrum and looked for Spock, surprised that he hadn’t joined them to stop the affray, only to find that he was gone from the Mess. The seat he’d been sitting was pushed out from the table, not pushed back in, as was his wont. Gaila scanned the room but caught no sight of Spock, only a faint trail of scent that he’d left to the door, a high anxious tang in the even more redolent than usual room.

Gaila turned back to observe Spock’s supper companion. The Ambassador was not looking at her, or the brawl that was being broken up at her feet. Instead, he was staring stonily ahead, jaw set, eyes dark, impervious to what was happening right in front of him.

+


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So … a bit more difficult to get back in the swing of writing when work is a bit of a disaster, but still … better late than never! As before, I note that _Family_ is the long-missing third story in the _Switch_ -verse, and I don’t suppose that what happens in Fidelity (or Family II) , the upcoming fifth story, will make much sense otherwise. You don’t have to be familiar with the previous stories, but it will most likely help. This is a story written from Gaila’s POV, and will likely be 2-3 more parts. I think.

+

Gaila was happy to enter the Botany Bay, to leave the tense and silent hallways of _Enterprise_ behind. It was tangible, this tension, not like scent, but like a cold draft that kept brushing against her skin. 

She was being metaphorical, of course. The air circulation systems on the _Enterprise_ , and its soft- and hardware, were absolutely superior. She _dared_ anyone to say anything negative about their performance to her. 

But still, the metaphor held. 

She engaged the do not disturb force field once inside the sector that was Hikaru’s domain. Technically, she was trespassing, but Hikaru had given her the codes long ago, although she had never before used them. But that had been before tonight, before everything that had happened in the Mess, and later in Sickbay … she shivered.

“You’re cold,” Hikaru said from behind her, putting his hand on her shoulder, and rubbing down her arm “Computer, raise ambient temperature to 30 degrees Celsius in Sector L-5.”

She turned and smiled at her friend, patting his sweet face. “You are always so thoughtful.” 

Hikaru looked at her with an assessing gaze in his dark eyes, “Are you getting sick, G? I heard you put the dnd on”—He tilted his head, “You don’t usually want to be alone.” 

She shook her head, and pursed her lips at the push of the tears that she felt rising inside, shocked and astonished that they were so close to overspilling. Orions did not cry, would not waste sacred water over such minor trivialities… yet, a small sob escaped her. 

“Gaila,” Hikaru’s voice was concerned and surprised as he reached for her, pulling her into a loose embrace.

She allowed it, despite the fact that her current emotions made her feel weak and stupid, something Orion women never were … why was she feeling like this? 

“What happened?” Hikaru’s voice was tender.

She sighed. She hated when men treated her like she was a fragile flower. It only revealed them as foolish, even when they were not Bound. “Oh, Hikaru,” she began. “Sorensen and b’Orluf got into a terrible fight in the Mess.”

“What?! They’re best friends!”

“I know,” Gaila said tightly, pulling back, and wiping at her eyes so she could pace. She was so restless. “But they did, and it was terrible! They were fighting verbally at first, and then, it just …” she made an explosive gesture, “and then the whole table was yelling and then they were all hitting each other.”

“Gaila,” Hikaru said, “are you sure?”

“Of course, I am sure,” she snapped at him, and to her horror, felt the tears well up again. “I still have Sorensen’s blood on my pants.” She pushed them down, leaving her legs bare but her genitals covered in deference to Terran sensibilities. “I had to help Doctor Bones pull Sorensen and b’Orluf off of the Cupcake.”

Hikaru’s eyes were as wide as they could go. “How did _those guys_ get the jump on Cupcake?” 

“I do not know,” Gaila said, “but the Cupcake’s head was bleeding and he was very, very angry, when he got out from underneath them, and then when he was trying to restrain b  
Orluf …”

“What?” Hikaru’s voice was soft, but he was clearly hanging on her every word.

“Sorensen punched b’Orluf in the back of the head,” Hikaru covered his mouth and shook his head, “and b’Orluf got away from the Cupcake and they went right back to fighting until reinforcements came in.” 

Gaila kicked off her boots and pants, and walked barefoot through the planting bed on the path Hikaru had made. The tall grasses and flowers brushed at her legs as she passed, their touch soothing and verdant. She climbed wearily up on to the bower that Hikaru had made for her, and sat down. “I had to help Dr. Bones and Security get them all down to the Sickbay.”

“They must have been dosed with something,” Hikaru was shaking his head. “I don’t know what, but … they must have. I mean, I know we haven’t passed through anything weird out there, because no one else …” He trailed off as he engaged his PADD and began reading something, most likely the atmospheric control reports for the last few hours.

“Not that Dr. Bones could find,” Gaila sighed. “He didn’t have enough restraints, at first, but …”

“What?” Hikaru asked again, looking up from his PADD.

“All of a sudden, they all just … stopped fighting,” Gaila said. She felt like crying again, and pulled off her tunics to let the healing rays of light get to her skin. Unlike Terran women, she had no need of wearing a brassiere for support, although she did enjoy wearing pretty lingerie for sport. Otherwise, she found the garment quite cumbersome and constricting, and she felt sorrow that her Terran friends did not have the requisite musculature to support their breasts. 

She also felt weak and teary again -- she must not be synthesizing properly, or the extra dose of pheromone blocker that Dr. Bones had given her in Sickbay because she had been involved in the brawl must have been too potent. Perhaps, she simply wasn’t getting enough brawling time, or exercise in general. 

Jim would be very upset when he found out that Sorensen had almost gotten the drop on _her_. He had stressed the necessity of self-defense not just for his Doctor, but for all his friends who served in Starfleet. It was a lesson that she had not required, having been trained long before she met him, but she sincerely appreciated his thoughtfulness, and care. In truth, she had learned new lessons in brawling from him, and his now nearly-forgotten propensity for bar fights. 

Gaila drew her hair up and away from her skin, letting more healing rays bathe her in light. She sighed as soon as the spectrum penetrated her dermis, feeling better by the micron as she stretched out. 

“That was good though, right?” Hikaru said. He went to his cart and retrieved the spray bottle that he used to put the extra moisture in the air, holding it aloft and waiting for her nod before he doused the air around her. 

Gaila watched the water droplets shining in the air, moving through the color spectrum before they dispersed. “Maybe, Hikaru, maybe. But it was very upsetting when they started crying,” she admitted softly. She could still here the disconsolate broken sobs emanating from the friends when they realized what they had done to each other. 

Hikaru shook his head, and sighed. “I’m glad they regret what they did,” he said.  
“I know it doesn’t apply to b’Orluf, but that’s very human of them. Still, the rapid cycling -- they must have been exposed to something, G. Something must have happened in Engineering.”

Gaila thought about the tension in the Mess, about the odd tension that seemed to encircle the ship itself, and shivered again. 

“Computer,” Hikaru said, “mark me and raise temperature 5 degrees Celsius in this micro-sector of Sector L-5.”

“That’s too warm for your friends, Hikaru,” Gaila said. 

“Nah,” he said, his smile as warm as the air was becoming, “not all my friends. Some of my friends love it.” 

He slipped his shirts off over his head before he bent and pulled out a covered bowl off his gardening cart. “Your poi, m’lady,” he said chivalrously.

“ _apouya’qae_ ,” Gaila corrected with a happy sigh. 

“Isn’t that what I said?” Hikaru asked mischievously. “Eat, and relax,” he said. His chest was glistening with a light sweat, his essence filling in the middle spectrum. Hikaru smelled like good soil and simple foods and something that she thought of as just him, his earthy warmth. “I’ve got to take care of some of my other friends.”

Gaila raised an eyebrow, allowing him to see her appreciation of his fine physique. 

Hikaru just smiled and pointed at her dinner. “Food, G.” 

Gaila dipped her fingers into the sweet, spicy delicateness of the _apouya’qae_. The _Enterprise’s_ Chef did not have her mother’s touch with the dish, but really, it was a more than adequate preparation. She glanced up at Hikaru through her lashes, already beginning to feel restored. “Just as long as you remember that there is more than one kind of sustenance,” she said sweetly, lying back against her bower and sliding her fingers into her mouth.

Hikaru eyed her recumbent form, as her bared skin gleamed in the lights that he had strung over her bower, just for her. “I am not likely to need reminding, G,” he murmured. He stood there a moment more, and then shook himself and went off to his nightly rounds. 

Gaila smiled and dipped her fingers in the _apouya’qae_ , content to wait and breathe freely under the healing light until Hikaru’s return.

+

Gaila stretched languidly as she walked down the mostly emptied hallways of the _Enterprise_. She loved Hikaru, truly. He was sweet, but not sentimental, and he was lithe and graceful in a way that was elegantly masculine, something he had first demonstrated when he had offered her fencing lessons to help her adjust to her damaged leg. She had enjoyed their matches --swordplay or otherwise – and had even learned a thing or two, just as she had taught. All was as it ought to be, there at least.

Still … it occurred to her that the ship should not yet be so silent, not this early in the hours assigned for evening. Perhaps all of the crew were curled up with their lovers, but somehow, she doubted this. She had been heading back to her own quarters, but now … feeling the menace in the deserted hallways, she changed direction and headed forward to where she had made her nest. It was little more than a Jefferies Tube that she had commandeered to be her own. Hard against the hull, her nest was tucked above the smallest forward observation deck and recreation room. That section of the ship had been significantly damaged during the Battle of Vulcan and she’d found her nest when she’d done system repairs in the ducts. She knew that Scotty was aware that she’d altered the ship’s blueprints to dead-end this tube a junction back, to hide her special place, but he kept her secret because of their shared love for the _Enterprise_ itself -- although she doubted that Scotty thought of it as his family’s house, as she’d come to over the many lunar cycles they’d been aboard. 

As she approached the turn to the forward turbolift, she heard voices ahead of her. An Operations crewmember hurried by her, head down and looking flushed, and she increased her pace. One familiar voice seemed louder than it actually was in the quiet of the hallway, but it was certainly nothing to the level of the voices that she had heard earlier in the evening. She followed the thread of Jim’s voice around the corner. Perhaps the yeoman had caught the Captain chastising a member of the crew for some reason, and this was why he’d left a trail of distress behind him like a tail. She stopped short of turning the corner when she realized that Jim was talking to Nyota’s Spock and not happily. 

Of course, considering what had happened earlier in the evening, this was to be expected. Except that their body language was all wrong for that circumstance. Gaila stood stock still and observed.

Jim was dressed in his recreational blacks, obviously heading to the gymnasium, as was his typical routine, although the hour was later than usual. However, if Jim did not exercise heartily at some point during the day, his nervous energy tended to overflow, much as his sexual energy did if contained for too long. He must have been delayed by the trouble in the Mess, which should have explained why he was looking at Spock with such a grim expression. “There is nothing to discuss, Spock,” Jim said firmly.

“I disagree that there is nothing to discuss, Jim,” Spock said, “but this is not the place to hold such a discussion. If you would just accompany me back to my, or preferably, your quart-“

“No,” Jim said, and there was a note of finality in his tone. “You made your offer, and it was refused.” He turned to get in to the lift, and Spock stepped forward in a manner in which Gaila had never seen a Vulcan move before, swift and … she did not know how to describe it, other than grasping. 

“Jim,” Spock said, catching at Jim’s arm. 

His tone was almost pleading, and … _was he trying to touch Jim’s hand_? 

Jim turned in the open turbolift door and lifted his arm from where Spock still had hold of his forearm. “You do not have my permission to touch me, Commander.” Jim’s voice held a kind of menacing growl that she only associated with dire situations and she was so struck by the tension of the situation as well as what it suggested that she took in a breath. Spock’s head turned in her direction before Jim’s did.

Spock dropped Jim’s arm as if were radioactive, and then turned to go off in the opposite direction from where she stood, not sending a word of greeting to her or a leavetaking to Jim. 

“Are you coming, Gaila?” Jim asked, after a moment. 

In the past, before Jim had become Captain, this had been one of his favorite lines, a blatantly sexual innuendo ripe for flirting and fun, but tonight … tonight, Jim meant nothing more than the question he asked, holding the door open. 

In the past, she would have kissed and teased Jim and maybe flirted with him to find out what was going on, but now when Jim looked exhausted and stricken and bowed by whatever was happening between him and Spock, she just smiled and said, “Aye, Captain. 

The side of Jim’s mouth drew up in the crooked smile that she always found endearing when it was sincere, yet his blue eyes lacked the usual sparkle that the wry expression evoked. It was a somewhat disturbing contrast. 

“Bones said you were in the middle of that situation in the Mess, Gaila,” Jim asked her. “Are you OK?”

“I went to Botany,” she said in her usual tone. She knew that Jim would notice that she had not answered his question directly, but she would not burden him with her petty troubles when he had so many other burdens to shoulder. Indeed, Jim’s shoulders seemed to her to have broadened over the years particularly so that he could be the Captain that he had had to become. 

She was being metaphorical again, but she quite enjoyed the symbolic play of such language, now that she truly understood it. It had taken quite some time for Nyota’s explanations to be absorbed. 

In Jim’s case, shouldering of burdens was a particularly apt phrase. She had always found Jim to be an especially fine specimen of Terran male, albeit pale. His brilliantly blue eyes did light up his complexion, but she still found him sadly lacking in melanin, much less chlorophyll. He had, however, gotten even more attractive as the years of his captaincy had aged him. He seemed taller than he had when she first met him, although she knew that was because he was no longer that posturing and somewhat insecure young man he had been, but a man sure of his command who stood with his shoulders back and his spine straightened. Of course, he was also fully grown now, his skeleton hardened and heavier than it had been back at the Academy, with more breadth in the chest and shoulder, more like his Bones than the Jim he had been when they had been lovers. 

Gaila felt a sudden enormous pride in him, and a kind of possessiveness that she did not normally feel. She loved him fiercely, and always. 

Jim’s blue eyes were searching her person now, noting the blood stains on her pants. 

“I am well, Jim,” she said with crisp assurance, and his eyes regarded her face. “It was, however, distressing to see such good friends fighting in such a manner.” 

Jim looked at his feet, and paused before he looked up at her. 

“Good friends should try to resolve their differences with words,” she continued. “Isn’t that what you’ve always told me?” 

Jim’s smile was small, and lacking any sort of teeth. “Absolutely,” he answered.

“We resolved our differences,” Gaila stated, “when I accepted your words of apology.”

Jim nodded as the turbolift came to a halt at the deck upon which he would debark. “And I am still, and always, grateful for that, Gaila.” He hesitated, and turned back, holding the door ajar. “But the friend who was in the wrong has to offer the words of apology first, and he has to understand exactly what he has done or said that was wrong. That’s what we have to hope will happen, otherwise it’s just empty gesture.”

Gaila listened to his words, and nodded and smiled as was expected of her by Terran social conventions. She wished Jim a good night and he let the door close. When Jim disappeared from her view, her smile dropped.

Hope, she thought bitterly. Hope was useless without action – she had known this forever. And although she was Orion through and through, she had vowed that she would not Bind others to her without their consent and make them bend to her will. She would, however, do whatever else was necessary and not wait on something as unformed as hope. Manipulate was the word Nyota used, and she always heard the negative connotation when Nyota verbalized the concept. 

This did not concern her. She would do no harm, would take no action until she knew what the correct one was. She exited the corridor and walked briskly down the empty halls until she reached the Jefferies Tube that would lead her, ultimately, to her nest. 

In the Sol years since they had begun their mission, she had spent a fair amount of time in there, although not every night -- just those on which she was the loneliest, felt the lack of companionship most keenly. It wasn’t about sex – even on _Enterprise_ , she had her pick of partners, and there were always the shore leaves – but Starfleet, in its desire to accommodate her needs, had berthed her alone. Jim’s Doctor had told her that their reasoning was that she’d be able to go off her suppressants for some part of the time she was off-shift, but his raised eyebrow and the pronounced slurring of his words in the absence of alcohol had belied his disbelief and ire at the notion. Obviously, he knew how incrementally small that window of time would be, and although she suspected that Command was really trying to avert having to deal with the ramifications of berthing her with a non-Orion and its potential attendant issues, she had said nothing. Her vow not to Bind was her business, and no other’s. 

But it was then that she’d made her nest, filling it with silks and pillows and various pieces of tech. The peace and respite that being in it brought her was worth more than she could explain to a non-Orion. She particularly loved to be above a crowd on game nights, or when any of the crafting groups or book clubs were gathering. The hum of conversation was audible because she’d diverted a feed from the room into her nest, and set it on low volume. Occasionally, she even unrolled the viewscreen that she’d hidden amongst her silks and tapped into the visual feed. 

She knew that many of her Terran friends would consider her a voyeur, and not look kindly on her surveillance, but it’s not as if she were intruding into private spaces – everyone knew that the common areas were constantly monitored. Besides, on those nights when she was loneliest, nothing soothed her to sleep so well as the bright wash of voices, rising and falling, as they worked on a common task. She had been homesick for years for the communal spaces of Orion, but only here on _Enterprise_ , had she found a way to recreate that long-missed home. And, of course, late at night, in the quietest hours of gamma, the room had become something of a choice place for lovers without single berths to meet and tryst. She wondered if her presence, even hidden as it was, had somehow influenced that, but did not dwell overly much on the idea. Being woken by the sounds and smells of sex made her happy, contributed to her wellbeing, and if her unknown presence made the experience better for her _Enterprise_ family, that was satisfaction enough. 

On this particular evening, she was pleased to hear Doctor Bones’ mellifluous voice from the room below, once she turned on the audio feed. It was the time for the textile crafting group to meet, and usually, if she did not feel like going down to the room and participating, she would have piled her pillows behind her back and worked on her small loom, weaving the silks of her people. Tonight, however, she verified Nyota’s absence on the view screen and grimly found her keyboard. She bypassed the Security protocols and began to search, looking for anomalies, for anything that seemed different since Ambassador Selek had come aboard.

She knew who the Ambassador really was, of course, and not because she had hacked into the secure channels meant for Jim’s eyes only, although she considered it a part of her role to ensure that no one else did. Her tenacity had paid off – she’d unmasked more than one of Starfleet’s spies, some of whom Jim had kept on the ship, counting on Gaila to monitor their transmissions so that he could outsmart them, an assignment with which she was more than happy. These spies, some of them from Command, but a number from the Diplomatic Corps, had counted on their packets being buried so deeply in data-streams no one would notice them, but Gaila could always sense what did not belong no matter what the format. 

Her instinct was telling her that it was Ambassador Selek, the Spock that had been in another universe and time, that was the current outlier. Instinct, however, was not data, and so she searched, going back to the weeks before he had come aboard. 

She had little comparative data of a personal nature. She had met the Ambassador on previous trips, of course, yet, although he’d always been cordial and engaging, he’d never been particularly interested in _her_. Instead, when he had sought her out, it was for her insight and intelligence regarding his younger counterpart, and that Spock’s relationship with her Nyota. It had been these conversations that had given him away, that allowed her to catalogue his scent and understand just how much of it was like Nyota’s Spock. It was similar enough in such key ways that she had to believe the two Vulcans related, and closely. The Ambassador had confirmed his relationship to Spock as closer than brother, but not father and son, and left it at that. 

Nyota’s Spock had told her the whole truth when she’d described her puzzlement, inquiring what kind of familial bond that they could have based upon those terms. Never would she have imagined ‘clone’, and not simply because of their age difference. Their scents were _similar_ , but not the _same_. 

Gaila searched the data, wondering what she would sense now if she were to speak with Selek, and Spock … what was he doing? He had clearly made what Terrans called ‘a pass’ at Jim, but why? There was nothing, nothing in his scent to indicate that his feelings for Nyota had begun to devolve. So … why?

She didn’t even realize how much time had passed until she heard Jim’s voice over the feed, noting now that the hum of chatter had dropped to nearly nothing. She checked the chron to see that two hours had passed since she’d left Jim at the turbolift, and tapped into the visual feed. 

Jim was laughing as his Doctor made him sit and hold a skein apart on his hands so that the Doctor could wind the yarn into a ball, and she smiled to see the unfeigned happiness and ease in his expression as he regarded his lover.

“Pretty sure we have a program that will do this,” Jim said. 

“Oh, hush,” the Doctor said. “Like it’s such a hardship. Chalk it up into the ‘other duties as necessary’ category.”

“For captaincy?” Jim asked, his voice warm with amusement. 

Doctor Bones’ hands were moving swiftly and incisively as always, seeming like creatures in and of themselves. She was sure that he could master her loom quite easily, unlike most Terrans. 

“Ass,” the Doctor remarked, finishing off the yarn with a flourish, and tucking the end into the center of the sphere. He bent forward and kissed Jim murmuring something that sounded like ‘thanks’, but when he turned to move away and put the yarn in the open bin on the wall, Jim caught his hand and pulled him back.

“What, darlin’?” the Doctor asked in a warm drawl.

“Just c’mere,” Jim said, and the Doctor sighed, stepping high to avoid the sprawl of Jim’s legs and siting down right next to him on the couch. 

Jim had kept ahold of the Doctor’s hand, and when his lover was seated, Jim raised their linked fingers and kissed just below the Doctor’s long index finger, before he slumped further down on the couch and dropped his head against his partner’s shoulder. He let out a big sigh.

The Doctor used his feet to move an ottoman over toward them, and they both stretched long legs out on it, intertwining them into a bit of a pile. “Was a long day,” the Doctor remarked. He turned his head and looked down, trying to see Jim’s face.

“I still don’t understand what happened,” Jim said.

“That makes two of us, darling,” the Doctor answered. “Hormones were all over the place, yes, but I still can’t figure out why.” He shook his head and sighed heavily. “That’s tomorrow’s problem. C’mon, sugar. Let’s go home and get you cleaned up.”

Jim was still wearing his recreational blacks, and even with the filtration systems, she could sense the odor of his dried perspiration. Jim’s eyes were mostly closed, and he made a low murmur. 

“It’s our night for the tub,” the Doctor said in a tone that could only be described as sultry.

Jim’s eyes popped open and he tilted his head up to look at his lover, raising an eyebrow. 

Gaila frowned. He looked so very tired, and oddly young at the same time.

Doctor Bones raised the hand that Jim wasn’t holding and stroked through Jim’s hair, his long fingers rubbing along Jim’s scalp and then down his neck. 

Jim moaned, and the Doctor kissed his cheek, and then the lid of one of his eyes.

“C’mon,” the Doctor urged. “A good soak is just what the Doctor ordered.”

“My doctor,” Jim said in a tone Gaila could only describe as possessive.

“Damn straight,” Doctor Bones said, and untangled his feet from Jim’s, pushing the ottoman out, and standing up. He tugged on Jim’s hand, and pulled him to his feet, tossing the yarn into the bin and ordering it closed as he urged Jim toward the door. 

Jim disengaged the privacy lock that she had not noticed him engage, and he and the Doctor slipped through the doors into the corridors, the Doctor ordering the lights off before the door whisked close.

She altered her video feed to follow them, smiling as she noticed that Jim, who usually was so discreet about any kind of public display of affection, did not let go of his Doctor’s hand in any of the public spaces, not even when they entered the Captain’s quarters and the door closed behind them, obscuring them from her view.

She smiled and curled into her pillows, determined to take a couple of hours of rest, before she returned to her surveillance. 

+


End file.
